What in the world could be better than classic free movies?

I suppose I'll be a Luddite for the rest of my life, because I just assumed there were copyright laws and such that would keep certain things off of YouTube. Blissfully, I'm once again wrong.

While for sheer fun, there really is nothing better than the Muppets channel, for movie lovers, there's at least one that's better: crazeclassics.

I stumbled across it after one of the two movies below was in a recent edition of the Ebert Club newsletter (a must-read for me), and had to check out the source. It turns out that whoever is putting this channel together has already put up 116 movies, all of which can be considered classics of some degree.

There's "M," "The Man With the Golden Arm" and many more, so it's well worth subscribing to the channel you can find here, and for your viewing pleasure (and mine, during my next several lunch breaks), I've included today the two best he had there.

I'm rather ashamed to say that until it was playing last year at the Film Forum in NYC, I had never seen Carol Reed's great "The Third Man," but now that I have, I can make this completely ridiculous statement: It's better than "Casablanca." Yes, really. With a screenplay from novelist Graham Greene, the tale of what unfolds when American pulp Western writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) turns up in post-World War II Vienna in search of his old friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) is film noir at its very best. Enjoy.



Now, I don't believe, as some Southerners actually do, that you can learn everything you need to know about life from "To Kill a Mockingbird," but that doesn't stop it from being just one damn fine film. And in fact, when pressed to name one favorite movie, I often fluctuate back and forth between this and Fernando Meirelles' "City of God." Enjoy the movie in its entirety, and stick around at the end for something completely wild.



I have to take the word of whoever posted it that this is indeed Guillermo del Toro getting all wolfy in a Mexican Alka Seltzer, and you can decide for yourself. If so, it's very funny, and really needs no more words from me, so if you'll excuse me now, I'm off to the job that still somehow pays my bills. Peace out.